


How Persephone Was Stolen

by CuriousNymph



Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Although it was clearly supposed to be canon, An ode to friendship firstly though, Bad Decisions, But good ones too, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Greek Mythology - Freeform, I Don't Even Know, Idiots in Love, In a way, Just enjoy it I guess?, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Non-Canon Relationship, Slow Burn, Superpowers, Teenage Drama, Teenagers, Who knows how this happened, i will fight you on this, they just don't know it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 07:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14890139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriousNymph/pseuds/CuriousNymph
Summary: Layla has always liked the story of Hades and Persephone.Often told as one of kidnap and forced affection, she knows it to be something else entirely - a story of reconciliation and genuine love, between two people who would appear wholly unsuited to each other.Layla knows Warren Peace is not Hades.But it doesn't stop her from imagining he is.





	How Persephone Was Stolen

**Author's Note:**

> This was also a total accident, but hey - what can you do???
> 
> I'm only *mildly* aware that I keep writing new things instead of finishing old things but Miss Thursday is still getting written (I reckon about three more chapters???) and Strange Happenings plot points are on a constant 360 turnaround in my mind, so don't freak out if you still don't get any updates. Exams are making me break out in a sweat, people - Mileven will have to wait. 
> 
> In the meantime, however, take this crazy weird oneshot (it's more like a novella HOLY GOD) that I decided to write after surfing the internet about Sky High, a film I only vaguely remember coming out originally, which I then proceeded to sit down and watch one night. Suffice to say, I am well and truly behind Warren and Layla becoming a thing. 
> 
> Lo and behold - this arrives. 
> 
> As to be expected, a playlist served as the basis for my motivation whilst writing it, so have fun listening to it if you like that sort of thing too: https://open.spotify.com/user/ingenioussprite/playlist/0eOY0Kh8WSh1pJIWtKYoqp
> 
> If there are any mistakes in it, I'll pick up on them and change them when I do another re-read. It's 2:00am - I'm shamefully too tired to care about it right now, but future me will, I promise. 
> 
> Please enjoy where possible.

 

The first time he sees her, it’s a simple night at the Paper Lantern where very little happens on a Tuesday shift, but he’s not complaining. Whatever the case is, the job is for the money and the peace and quiet, not for the supposedly great work experience. It’s a Chinese restaurant, not an internship.

Nevertheless, he can’t help but let his eyes linger over the tables as he counts down the number of customers in his mental tally, the dim red light casting husky glows across the low ceiling and drapery. It’s her red hair that catches his eye first – a stark, fiery ginger that clashes too mightily with the walls to be ignored. At first he’s sure it’s just his eyes playing up, although he can hardly claim bad eyesight, but as he makes his way forward, he begins to realise that what he’s seeing is actually someone who looks awfully familiar – like looking at a family photograph and knowing you should recognize the members, but can’t recall the names.

“You’re still working on that?”

It’s a casual introduction, he hopes, but it’s enough to make her whip her head up, startled green eyes looking slightly tired around the edges.

For once, he’s struck by her face – yeah, it does _seem_ familiar, he thinks – but it’s not the kind of struck he’s used to. Not the ‘struck’ he associates with realizing the guy in front of him is the son of the man who decided to lock up his Dad. No – this is the ‘struck’ of hearing the news you didn’t expect and seeing the face of your crush when you’d prayed they weren’t in school that day.

“Hey,” she chirps, shoulders a little slumped in comparison to the rather blank look on her face. Not devoid of emotion, Warren decides – just not _caring_ enough to display said emotions.

“Hey,” he mutters back, feeling only a little awkward that he’s holding a water jug with his hair tied back, an apron around his waist. Or perhaps, it’s just the fact that he’s only just _now_ coming to terms with the fact that she actually looks pretty in this light. A sort of naturalistic beauty that’s only brought to life by the rather vivid green eyeshadow on her eyelids and smudge of leftover lip-gloss on her badly disguised, disappointed pout.

“We go to school together?” She looks almost a little peeved that he doesn’t recognize her, so he’s thankful that the dim lights are obscuring his slightly flushed cheeks. It’s far too warm in here.

(That’s what he tells himself, anyway.)

It finally strikes him.

“You’re Stronghold’s friend.” He points lamely in her direction, as if she doesn’t already know this herself.

Now it makes sense. The chirpiness could only be bound to someone who’s eternally surrounded by equally chirpy people.

“Ye-ah,” it’s a groan of reluctance; a slow, terrible little noise that makes him curious as to why she’s so annoyed to be labelled as such.

Another lightbulb flashes off and he realizes why – she hates labels.

He can only _just_ about tell.

“Yeah.” He mutters this to himself, glancing to the side as if to wonder whether or not he ought to be addressing someone else, since she seems so obviously reluctant to talk about the issue.

He’s never been introduced to awkward silences before, but apparently, this is what it’s supposed to feel like.

“You want me to heat that up for you?” He points meagrely at her untouched plate, which has clearly been pushed around like a lab experiment on a petri dish. So much for that, then.

She leans forward, a wave of silky red hair falling forward. It looks just a little frizzy near her forehead, the static heat causing it to curl a little at her temples, but he tries to ignore that as well.

“We’re not supposed to use our powers outside of school.” She hisses at him, and he feels like smirking but decides against it. Reputation, he tells himself.

 

(It is not.)

 

“I was just gonna stick it in the microwave.” He hisses back at her, a sardonic lilt to his tone, and the smile that blooms on her face reminds him of flowers opening up petals to the sun; a warmth that pervades almost anything.

“Ah.” She pauses for thought, but can’t seem to help herself from spilling her reasons for being here.

“I was supposed to be meeting Will here, but – no.” There’s that dejected sigh again, like she can’t believe this is her luck.

Well. At least she knows how _he_ feels now.

He nods once, looking only slightly confused by the way this conversation’s going. He’d never been a great conversationalist, due to unforeseen (or possibly foreseen – whatever) circumstances, but even so – she seems to be making it difficult for him to just turn heel and walk away like he does with everything else.

This is his _job_ , not an interview.

“Do you want to sit down?”

Warren is only marginally worried that he’s laying it on too thick here, being so interested in this conversation, considering the way his feet haven’t moved from this spot like they usually would do by this point, but he elects to ignore this as well.

“I think I can spare a minute,”

He slides into the booth opposite her, the leather seat warm from the heat of the restaurant, the heady scent of incense mixing with some flowery perfume he can just about catch coming off of her. He doesn’t quiz himself on what flower it might actually be.

One snap of his fingers and a flame flickers to life from his fingertip, the steady heat on his skin like a brush of a warm hand, rather than the sting of a burn. He only got burned once when he was younger, long before he gained his pyrokinectic abilities, but it was enough of a reminder to avoid hot ovens again.

For a moment, he wonders if that’s why he’s been able to keep a restaurant job for so long.

(No more oven burns would be Mrs Chan’s dream.)

She lets loose a little laugh, biting her lip in surprise. He supposes such a gentle use for such a destructive force was what she least expected, but he likes to think he can be as tender as he can be fierce.

He isn’t called Warren Peace for nothing.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

So far as he is concerned, Warren sits at lunch alone, and this has and always will be the case, no matter how much teachers and students alike lecture him into the ground about how important friends are. So Layla deciding that this is apparently her table as well does not sit well with him. Quite literally, in this case.

Seeing her in the bright light of day – as close as they are to the sun up here, compared to the people down on the ground – is rather an interesting change. He tells himself it’s ‘interesting’ and nothing past that, because seeing her in the evening, electric light of his workplace is something else entirely, but by this point, he knows he’s lying through his teeth.

As it is, she seems unperturbed, that overly bright smile on her face an indicator that he’s not going to like what she has to say next. He has come to associate such sprightliness with a keen desire to make him uncomfortable without her realizing it, because she’s still under the impression that she can change his mood, despite his snaps to the contrary.

She just doesn’t realize that is _also_ a lie, because she is changing his mood beyond what he can comprehend.

 _Overly chirpy_ , his head yelps back at him, but he’s too focussed on not smiling in public to care about that.

“Hi, Warren!” She sings, flyaway hairs catching in her eyelashes as she brushes them away from her face absently, today attired in what he can only describe as typical Layla. One part of his mind is screaming at him: GREEN. The other half is telling him to stop staring before it becomes obvious – because, as he tells himself, he should know well enough to keep his ‘permanent’ scowl on his face.

He glares at her with a slightly confused squint, leaning forward over his satchel, perhaps in an attempt to appear intimidating.

“Did I do or say anything last night to make you think this was OK?” He hopes his blunt tone is enough to make her forget the somewhat gentler Warren from the Paper Lantern last night, because he’s continued to look back on that encounter with only a slight cringe in its wake.

She laughs like a songbird, a smile breaking out on her face.

“You’re so funny Warren, but seriously, you’re never gonna believe what happened!” 

He tries to pretend like he doesn’t care about how she’s instantly making him feel very self-conscious, mostly because him sitting with people is an absolute no-go here and that said workplace provides a very different set of rules, but she’s already motored on with her news, stabbing her salad with a ferocity he is glad to not be on the receiving end of.

“I was just about to ask Will to Homecoming when, wouldn’t you know it, I told him I was going with you instead!”

“I don’t remember that being the plan,” he replies, a vehement dislike for the entire situation creeping up into his gut, squeezing him from the inside. This is _not_ what he needed right now. Not when –

It’s at this moment when Magenta sits down in front of him, sidling into the conversation like she belonged here all along. For someone who can turn into a guinea pig, she sure makes up for it with her snarky attitude and quick tongue, sharp enough to shoot him down before he can even begin to complain.

“What do you think you’re doing?

“It’s called sitting,”

He barks out a grunt, as much like a mutt as he is often called behind people’s hands.

“Nobody sits here but me,” He glares at Layla through his hair, too annoyed to brush it away, in order that she can experience the full extent of his anger, but he is miraculously ignored by both as Magenta continues on the conversation like he ought not to be there.

What in the hell is going on here is anybody’s guess, least of all his.

Two more fill the spaces beside him – Ethan and Zach, if Warren cares enough to remember – but it’s too late, because Layla has spluttered into a fake laugh that is so startlingly unrealistic that he wants to puke.

“Warren, you are cra-zy!”

He squints at her again, wondering where on earth – or indeed, the sky – the somewhat calmer, more inquisitive and observant Layla from last night has disappeared to, because he’s decided he very much wants her back. He supposes that in some peculiar twist of fate, the two of them are entirely different when around each other, in places where they’re not burdened by the first impressions they made at the start.

Who knew Chinese restaurants could be so character exposing.

Her smile fades, just as he sees Stronghold look back at the both of them like he’s making a mental plea to be thrown through the window. Christ, if Warren knew it was this difficult to make people avoid him, he would’ve started sooner.

“Please, I promise, I’ll make this as painless as possible,” Layla sighs, trying to scrape back some dignity after that rather counterintuitive move from before.

“So, you’re not doing this just because you like me or anything?”

He’s actually slightly (very) surprised to hear how bitter and derisive his tone is, mostly because he felt he’d perfected the disinterested scowl and matching tone of voice a long time ago. Layla’s face has dropped, revealing the sad pout to her mouth that he really wishes she’d kept a secret.

“You’re doing this to get to Stronghold.”

Again, her face looks mildly ashamed at how easily he’s caught onto her game, but at the same time, it doesn’t stop her from admitting it. At least she’s honest, he thinks – but then, he wasn’t expecting anything else.

“Yeah,”

He grins, making her eyes widen as he leans in.

“Then I’m in.”

He pauses, watching Magenta’s eyebrow quirk in typical scepticism.

“But I’m not renting a tux,”

He clears off from table, deliberately aiming a hit at Zach with his bag, leaving Layla’s surprised and frankly startled expression in his wake, stalking off to the nearest place that’s furthest from people.

He is resorting to lies by this point, and it’s for image and nothing more.

 

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

Layla had never considered that she might ever look at someone else apart from Will, because Will has proved to her time and again that he is true, genuine material, always meaning everything he says, even if he comes across as slightly and intriguingly oblivious to the most obvious signs. Like, for example, her crush on him.

So, when someone like Warren pops up, least of all in the most unintimidating manner possible, in the restaurant that he _apparently_ works at, one can forgive her for suddenly taking an interest.

Her first glimpse of him had been on their first day – an intense stare and streaks of red in his unruly mane of hair, hanging in deceptively shy curtains across his face. She’d thought, perhaps at first, that he was merely there to incite fear into anyone who dared even look at him, but after his cafeteria fight with Will, she’d seen some kind of unknown anger at something that wasn’t already being directed at her friend’s head.

She’d only since seen some sparingly short bout of kindness at the restaurant, but that had been like meeting a different person. The shoddily tied back hair, the lack of battered leather jacket, the bare hands, and apron round his waist – well, it was enough to extinguish the combustible anger, as it were, and replace it with the tender concern of a boy only wholly himself when he wasn’t being watched by other people.

She’s been looking ever since to understand what had happened to incite such a change in his personality, but by the next week, Warren is back to his old self, as grumpy and disinterested, often found sulking in solitary corners that he makes look dangerous.

Her track record with Will is no better – Gwen has permanently attached herself to his arm and it’s causing explosive fury in her gut that she’s most definitely not proud of.

‘Course, Warren doesn’t seem all that pleased that she’s so intent on showing her friend up either.

The steps outside the school are a less than inconspicuous place to conduct her façade, but spotting Warren hunched over a novel of some description is enough for her to sidle up to him and land herself by his side, hand curling into his as she begins her one-sided conversation to attract Will’s attention.

“Hey there, cutie! So I was just thinking about you! I can’t wait ‘til Homecoming, I’m so excited, I’ll finally -”

She watches Will walk away, hand still in Gwen’s but head making an attempt to rotate on his neck in a 180 degree twist, but he gives up almost instantly, turning back to stare adoringly into Gwen’s face.

She can sense Warren’s eyes on her, his palm a secure and solid reminder of his presence as she frowns to herself, absently stroking the thumb on his hand that she has clasped in her fingers, only a little surprised that the feel of it isn’t quite so awkward as she’d imagined. Her palm feels warm, and before she knows it, she’s gasping in shock as a small fire erupts from his hand, his skin smoking but unsinged. It feels like getting a sting from a bee, which she knows plenty about - bees are never done following her everywhere, ever since she was a child. She thinks maybe one day becoming a beekeeper might be the perfect idea for her, but that’s a thought for a different, rainy day.

She looks round at him, his glare enough for her to realize it’s not because of the bright sunlight.

“Never call me ‘cutie’,” he snaps, grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder, back making an impressive silhouette as he strides off to find another lonely corner to go mope in.

Layla sighs to herself, looking at her palm briefly, stroking the spot where his flames touched her hand.

There’s the slightest of marks in the skin, like a small, insignificant candle flame on its own, reminding her absently of the flame he conjured for the restaurant candle three nights ago.

It doesn’t hurt at all.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

It’s only when she arrives at the Homecoming dance that Layla actually wishes she’d chosen not to come. For all her pitfalls, Layla has always had it in her head to do things for other people before she does things for herself, and she feels coming to Homecoming has become something of a selfish indulgence, just to spite Will for not looking in her direction.

Even as she’s standing at the drinks table, she gets that the whole thing has been fuelled by her jealousy, like the stroppy heroine of the books she often reads but doesn’t wish to imitate. In fact, she would go so far as to say that trying to be like them would lead her down the supervillain route, and that is a motorway she isn’t willing to turn on to anytime soon either.

Thinking back on the past two months, she wonders whether or not she missed something because, quite frankly, her somewhat naïve vision of high school has been ditched in the bin the moment she set foot here.

And amongst all of it, finding the troublesome and somewhat fiery persona of Warren Peace – the hellish combination of anger and power – to be as sensitive and curious as everybody else has thrown her through the window, never mind sideways.

She can’t help it, really – every time she considers how unusual that now infamous restaurant scene was in actuality, she keeps asking herself how it came to be that Warren Peace even thought to look at her.

She could see how it might change his reputation, if people saw how he really was – as a teenage boy just like everybody else, with feelings and pains and annoyances and pet peeves and worries and struggles, instead of seeing his Dad and only his Dad, and pretending that he didn’t also have a hero for a mother. There is good in him – there always has been. He just hasn’t been willing to show it.

However, standing denoting that all boys in the school are jerks certainly gets her more of those secretive glimpses into his real personality.

“Thanks a lot,” she hears from behind her, only to find said overpowering figure standing sheepishly behind her, a more than embarrassed look on his face. Her first thought is that he seems much too devil-may-care in what ought to be a suit that smartens one up, but her second thought sends the heat to her cheeks, as she realizes that that somewhat ragged look to him - in his white shirt and waistcoat, and long hair tucked behind one ear – is much too attractive than she should be registering.

_Heck, she’s finding herself in deep water here._

“I thought you said you’re weren’t going to rent a tux,” she hears herself saying incredulously, watching his dark eyes glance over her rather frivolous curls and vibrant green dress, mimicking an Ancient Grecian robe a little more than she intended. She’s kind of always been fascinated by Greek mythology – Gaia, and Demeter, and Persephone. Goddesses of the land, just like her, she reckons.

Looking at Warren, she’s seeing Ares and Hephaestus and –

_Hades._

That’s it, she thinks. The wrecked and damaged and yet somehow gentle and sarcastic and humorous God of the Underworld, too entranced by the light to be entirely swayed towards the dark.

“It’s my Dad’s,” he says above the noise, leaning in so she can hear him, letting her catch a scent of some woodsy aftershave that reminds her of pine trees and misty forests.

Exactly her sort of place, but to hell if she’s telling him that either.

“He doesn’t have much use for it in Solitary,”

Layla looks up at him with a pained look in her eyes, watching his expression turn to an almost ashamed glance down at the floor, and she can’t think how to approach the subject. He wore a tux for _her_. Even when he said he wasn’t going to, for the sake of maintaining image and reputation and so many other things that shouldn’t matter to him, because he’s actually this incredibly sweet - if not also ill-tempered - guy who carries way more on his shoulders than he ought to.

Layla can’t stop looking at him.

And he thinks he’s just a supervillain’s son?

She can see the radiance of goodness off him from miles away.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

The first year swoops in, and Warren perhaps feels that he’s being mocked for merely being allowed to stay in the vicinity, never mind in the classes, just because his often tempestuous behaviour has set the place alight, and not in a good way.

He doesn’t doubt that he’s got a reign on these things far more than he had done in the past, but he neglects to tell everyone that it might not be entirely his doing.

Layla – however he managed to gain her favour – seems to be intent on keeping him by her side, constantly making an effort to be with him when she can. He feels like he’s pulled her into a world that maybe needs no introduction for her – his life is one of tempestuous behaviour as well – but she seems unfazed.

Whilst others have run away in fear of losing limbs, if they dared incite his anger, Layla merely smiles and tells him it’s fine.

They’re not _close_. He wouldn’t call it that.

At least he doesn’t _think_ he would.

Layla is something different at Sky High. He makes his way as he normally would – with a scowl and a snap and a bark like a ferocious dog, forever embroiling himself in the persona of a wicked sharp knife not worth getting cut for, but he doesn’t care. All he seems to find himself caring about are his friends.

Will Stronghold is not what he would’ve picked out as a friend at first, but the guy has some queasily charming way about him that makes Warren think he deserves a little more credit for what he’s done. He’s genuine, mostly – and that’s often hard to come by.

Magenta is quick on her feet – whether that’s anything to do with her power, he has no idea, but she doesn’t give him time to argue with her. She smiles at him secretly and laughs out at his retorts, but he smirks internally, so he knows she’s won over him indefinitely.

Zach is – well, he’s annoying, but in a good-natured way. Like a cat that won’t stop pawing at the ball of string. He’s unbearably clumsy but naively trusting, and seems genuinely unable to hate anyone, even him. Warren takes this as a good thing, even if it might just be Zach being too vulnerable for his own good.

Ethan is much the same – very much a genuine friendly sort that would often rub Warren up the wrong way, but Ethan seems to think him a little bit like a tiger in need of care and attention rather than a cage into which he ought to be thrown. He’s not sure whether or not that makes him a good person in Ethan’s eyes, but he’s not all that bothered.

But Layla –

Layla is something he had not bargained on. Ever since Homecoming, he’d thought perhaps that was it. That their paths would diverge and they would be eternally lingering on the edges of what could have been, rather than what was, but he feels like he’s surprised himself by how things have turned out.

Almost a year in, and already she’s all he can see.

His shift at the Paper Lantern becomes longer as the summer nights of his sophomore year creep in, casting dark shadows on the sidewalks and making the place feel heady and thick with heat as he sheds his often layered t-shirts for thin cottons and lightweight jeans, the charcoal greys and pale blues washing out his complexion but making his eyes look dark.

Layla is the first to mention it to him.

“Grey suits you,” she says casually, catching him off guard as he saunters past her table, tea towel over one shoulder, with bowls piled up on his tray.

He looks over his shoulder to see her sitting there, looking up at him like she’s seeing something beyond his figure, but is too careful to want to tell him.

“Uh, what?” he asks stupidly, and the part of him that desperately wants to tell her to stop making him feel like he can’t think straight is already going into meltdown, just at the sight of her eyes watching him.

She’s grown in the past year – confidence was always her strong suit, but now it’s too bright to deny it. Her hair’s wispy by her ears, stray curls around her face, green eyeshadow gone but replaced with what appears to be flowers tucked into the back of her head, in some confusing, twisted bun that Warren decides not to try and make sense of. She’s barely wearing any makeup actually, save for some smudge of her ever iconic peach lip gloss, but she’s wearing dark jeans and an off-the-shoulder lace top, baring shoulders sprinkled with dark freckles.

“Grey. It looks good on you,” she repeats, and he merely coughs in response, looking out across the restaurant.

“Right.”

She smiles up at him – in that calming way that makes him reassess everything he’s ever done to try and find out why he deserves her in his life – but he’s unable to return it.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with Stronghold at the moment?” he quips, glad he’s holding something, otherwise he fears he mightn’t have an excuse to not sit down with her.

“Am I not allowed to spend time with myself?” she retorts, but there’s a laugh to her words that makes him smirk in kind when she takes a sip of her water.

Warren glances back at the restaurant, for a moment suspended in the throes of his daily life, watching it like an outsider. He comes here every night to interact with people he otherwise wouldn’t meet. They are all strangers to them, and yet the place somehow makes the experience feel intimate.

Looking at her in the deep, red light of the place feels far more intimate than he really thinks should be allowed.

He shrugs his shoulders noncommittally, feigning disinterest when he really cares quite deeply about how she feels. Warren is all about image, but he can feel it crumbling to his feet in seconds, the minute she sends him one of her honeyed smiles.

“Book?” he asks, sliding into the booth opposite her, like old times, when things were far simpler. He sees her and Stronghold together, and he isn’t remotely troubled by the idea that she seems happy with him. He’s just annoyed that he can’t voice any kind of thought for her deeper than friendship, but he knows it’s not fair on her. He just knows it isn’t.

She takes a fleeting glance back at the page she’s currently reading, open on the table with her food away from it, fearful of spillages.

“Greek mythology,” she states, folding her arms as she leans on the pages, looking over at him with her brown eyes.

Warren quirks an eyebrow.

“Sounds fascinating. I have to get back to work,” he yawns comically, looking to get up, but she just laughs at him, slapping her hand down on the page as she leans back on her seat.

“You think you’re so funny,”

“Yeah, because I _am_ ,”

She doesn’t reply, looking at him carefully, assessing his features. He’s certainly striking for a 16 year old, with a proud arch to his brow and nose, his lips full but eyes dark and sincere. If it wasn’t for the labels he had stitched into his back – _supervillain’s son, troublemaker, bad influence_ – she has no doubt he’d end up being the poster boy for heroism. All those good looks and he doesn’t even try.

“You’re really not,”

“If it helps you sleep at night,” he shrugs, throwing the tea-towel back over his shoulder as he lifts the tray again.

“See you around, Hippy,” he begins to walk away, wondering if he perhaps shouldn’t be so blunt with her, but he can’t help but feel the need to jump ship before he tries charting unknown territory.

“Warren?”

He swivels on his heel, finding Layla still looking at his back with a mixture of curiosity and longing in her expression.

“When’s your shift finish?”

Warren blinks once, a little confused as to how he managed to get himself in this situation, because it certainly wasn’t part of the high school plan he had figured out for himself. _That_ had included ultimate seclusion and sticking to his own company. Employing the attentions of the resident Mother Earth hadn’t even made the top 50 of things to try.

“Soon,” he answers with vague spite, because now she’s just teasing him when he really doesn’t need more reasons to become helplessly infatuated with her, even just as a friend. Their relationship was something of an oddity at the start – a partnership based on making lover boy Stronghold jealous, but it has somehow progressed to a genial companionship of sarcasm and truth that only the two of them seem to truly understand.

“Warren,” Layla deadpans her stare, and he rolls his eyes, glaring at the ceiling like this is the doing of some divine being that is attempting to throw shit at the fan in hopes of deterring him before it’s too late.

Why does she have to be so darn stubborn?

“9:30, Posy Girl, but why that should matter to you is beyond me,” he only cringes at his tone very slightly, but the hatred for his never-ending bad luck when it comes to romance and its strings is getting hard to tolerate.

Layla frowns spectacularly at his nickname – he can sense her feminist rant only a few metres away – and he would be more than interested to listen, but Mrs Chan’s eyes are boring holes into his back and he can feel his final pay check being waved in the air if he doesn’t get round to the other customers.

“I’ll wait up for you,” she says blankly, tucking a stray curl behind her ear as she turns back to her book, and Warren can’t help but look at her once, watching her blink as she reads on, trying to make sense of what he just heard.

What is she playing at?

He shakes his head in resignation, walking away, feeling like he may have just signed his life away to this girl and her endless hold upon him.

So much for trying to ignore that crush, then.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

It keeps happening after that. The summer flowers and Layla waits up for Warren every Tuesday shift he has until 9:30, waiting in her jeans and flowery tops, hair curled and twisted in an ever-growing amount of styles that serve to make Warren’s head dizzy. She seems incapable of being anything but cheerful, her trademark sass turning his head every time they’re with each other, but he keeps changing his mood when they find themselves back at school the next day.

Layla can’t decide how he’s managing to balance these two personalities – harsh, permanently pissed-off Warren and silently confident, sincere Warren. It’s like watching split personalities interact in the same space, but apart, and it’s messing with her head. What’s so bad that he can’t merge the two?

One particular night, Layla waits patiently by the door as she views the nigh-on empty restaurant, the curve of the aisle darkened to a crimson by the fading light as the lamps are turned off, the scent of incense and chilli spice opening up her sinuses. She can see Warren walking around behind the counter, bustling around Mrs Chan as they’re conversing in heated Mandarin that Layla can’t possibly decipher. The language is a little weird coming off of his tongue, his accent proving a little hard done by with the lilt of the words, but he makes it seem effortless. His hair’s still up in his carefree bun, but he’s already donned his dark denim jacket, a rip near the shoulder exposing the skin underneath. Mrs Chan is glancing in her direction, her heated tone clearly relating to Layla, but Warren is making vague gestures at his boss to stop pointing in her direction.

It’s at that moment that Layla bursts out laughing, realizing why the scene before her seems so weirdly funny – it’s like watching a boy and his grandmother arguing over how she’s embarrassing him. The two whip round in her direction and Layla makes a fruitless attempt to hide her giggles behind her hand, snorting into her hand as Warren makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and angrily pulls his hair out, letting the strands fall into disarray around his face. Mrs Chan slaps him on the chest with a positively devious look on her face, and he just grunts something incomprehensible back at her, storming through the swing doors with his satchel in tow.

“You ready?” he snaps, and Layla just snorts in laughter again. He has a smear of some kind of oil on his face, probably from the kitchens, and he glares back at her, his awesome height of 6 foot towering above her, but in such a way that provides security rather than incites threat.

Layla points vaguely at her own cheek.

“You have something on your -”

“What?” he snaps, cheeks flushing red with either the stifling heat or something else that makes her heart jump a little. She needs to get this under control.

She reaches up with a tentative hand, wiping her thumb across his face, the time suspended a little as he stares at her with a hard and indecipherable look in his eyes, the only sound the distant twang of the guzheng and erhu in the background music, too faint to make out clearly. Layla can feel Mrs Chan’s eyes on her as her hand lingers on Warren’s face, perhaps a little too carefully, but all she can think of is how warm his skin is against her touch, like brushing her hand on sun-warmed stone.

He pulls away a little reluctantly, swiping past her to the door, shouting back a goodbye that simultaneously sounds like an insult to Mrs Chan, who just yells something in return that sounds remarkably similar in tone.

The fading heat of the evening feels loving against Layla’s skin as her and Warren begin the walk back to her house again, only a few streets away from what he claims is his own residence. She doesn’t believe him in the slightest, but she’s willing to bet he’s not prepared to tell her – certainly not now and probably never.

“Gorgeous evening,” she smiles to herself, holding her book in both hands as she lets it slap against her walking legs, bag making a steady thrum on her thigh as the pavement shimmers with the last of the day’s heat, a careful hum in the air as a car passes by with barely a disturbance. Summer is her absolute bud – she revels in its life and beauty. She supposes it has something to do with her powers – chlorokinesis certainly seems to make her much of a season by herself, craving sunshine and heat and happiness like any common flower – but there’s something so innocently intimate and passionate about summer that it makes her long for things she can’t claim to want.

Namely things beside her, but she’s going to pretend that thought didn’t cross her mind.

Warren grunts in reply, but it’s not from lack of interest on his part. He’s still in the midst of trying to configure his brain back into functioning properly after that little moment back in the restaurant. If anything was bound to make it even _more_ impossible for him to ignore her, that might just have about done it.

“You know, summer always reminds me of Hades and Persephone,” Layla begins, making Warren turn his head to her in confusion.

“Huh?”

“You know – the myth? The God of the Underworld and Demeter’s daughter? Pomegranates?”

Warren looks at her like she’s admitted to being from outer space.

“No?”

Layla sighs, tapping her book indicatively.

“The love story?”

He looks even more confused, brushing his hair behind his ears casually, the flash of red in the strands catching the bronze light of the sun.

Layla thinks it probably best if she doesn’t say anything else, but she can’t seem to help herself.

“Persephone is the daughter of Demeter – goddess of the harvest and nature and stuff. And Persephone wanders into the Underworld and comes across Hades, and they fall in love. I mean, I’ve maybe cut that down a little bit, but -”

“Hold up – she’s a daughter of the goddess of nature? And she falls in love with the guy who looks after the _dead people_?” 

Layla pouts, shoving him in the shoulder.

“Dramatic irony, Warren! And no, he falls in love with her. She brings light and warmth into his life, and she’s the reason the summer comes and goes, and he just – you know -”

Warren seems unconvinced, so Layla drops it.

“It’s romantic, OK?” she mutters quietly, sweeping her hair back from her face as they turn in the corner.

“I’m sure it is,” he replies, and at first she thinks he’s being sarcastic as usual, but turning round to face him as she reaches her door, she notices there’s no trace of cynicism in his expression. He looks a little too golden in this light, like how the fallen angels are described; holy in their looks, but somehow broken in their ways.

She doesn’t think Warren is broken; she just thinks he’s lonely.

“You really care about this stuff, don’t you?”

Layla sighs, looking up at the orange bled sky, loving the colours but wishing she didn’t have to avert her gaze from him. He’s giving her a minor heart attack, looking as dishevelled and disgruntled as he can possibly manage without it being intentional.

She tries to remind herself that she has a boyfriend. That she loves him. That she chose to go with Will the first time she had the opportunity and that Warren has never given her any _real_ indication that there’s some unnamed attraction there.

And yet –

“Sure I do. They’re the stories I grew up with,”

He shrugs his broad shoulders back at her, scratching the back of his neck.

“Seems a bit melodramatic if you ask me. Too much fucking about with emotion,”

Layla quirks an eyebrow at him; hearing him swear sounds like reciting poetry, but not in a flowery way.

In a deep, guttural way, like he’s trying to claw out his own heart.

“Being emotional isn’t a bad thing.” She reasons, stepping forward to look up into his face. He returns her gaze with a defiant glint in his eye, a smirk edging its way onto his lips from the corner of his mouth, seconds away from that cheeky grin that looks like it belongs with the charming prince of her bedtime fairy tales when she was five.

“Yeah, whatever,”

“You rule with your heart, Warren. You should know all about it.” She slaps a playful hand on his chest, careful to keep it friendly, but he keeps looking at her face, eyes narrowing only marginally for a brief few seconds.

The sun’s evening glow feels warm on her skin, jeans feeling a little heavy in the heat.  She’s watching how a bead of sweat runs down his forehead, the heat making his bronze skin glisten and dark hair hang limply by his head, like he’s taken a shower and is only just beginning to dry off.

“Yeah. I do,” he murmurs, and the longing in his gaze lasts for less than a second. He’s already stepping away from her and turning down the road, casting a hand up into the air as a form of goodbye as he tucks his spare hand in his pocket, the other gripping his satchel strap.

Layla feels like he’s telling her something, but she can’t figure out the message.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

Warren is intent on not sending any messages to Layla whatsoever, but whether or not he’s actually managed that feat is still up to the jury. Ever since the beginning, he has always believed that his poker face has been unparalleled in every form since the millennia began, and yet he begins to feel like he’s slowly losing a grip on such tediously built stoicism.

And all because of some hippy girl who makes his heart beat too fast and sparks flicker at his fingertips.

It’s not his fault, he decides. If anything, it’s hers. For deciding to use him to get back at Will. To circle him like a satellite to an impending sun, already planning on combusting but said satellite being too blind to notice.

And he thinks he might be in love with her. In that strange, not-entirely-sure way, but something’s clearly got him entrapped, because he feels cemented by her side no matter how much he tries to pull away.

But she annoys him too. She can’t be perfect, and neither can he, and that makes it much too easy for him to just blatantly ignore her flaws, but she has them. Her necessity to be insanely optimistic, even when naivety has left people in ditches, and her stubbornness and refusal to cooperate on anything. She never used to be quite so forceful, but he feels age and sexual frustration has led her to become a Valkyrie in her spare time, and thus leave him in a position of loving a very dangerous, very capable, and strikingly, achingly, hungrily beautiful girl.

One way to avoid her is to read. Reading is perhaps a calm task that would never be associated with him, but he feels like it’s always an opportunity to ignore the world and outer universe as well as the people he doesn’t like. In fact, he’s loved it ever since he could actively spell out the words he was reading and then insert them into conversations where they didn’t belong, just to grin and say he knew what it meant, but said it anyway because it was funny. He had been that kid back then, smiling and laughing and messing about and so desperately trying to understand why his Dad was never where he wanted him to be. And then one day he’d stopped trying to care, and he’d begun to read alone since then.

With Layla now in the picture, he feels like the universe is trying to offer him back the sunshine it robbed from him so long ago, but he’s still unwilling to believe it’s quite as innocent as it’s making out.

So he reads.

Time lapses on, and before he knows it, exams have come and he can barely concentrate on anything other than what’s planning to bash his head in next, suffering from what feels like perpetual mental turmoil.

He’s never claimed to be bright – not to the level that Layla has achieved – but then again, he’s never really bet on anyone caring.

But he’s intuitive. He’s honest. And he _is_ clever – just in his own way.

Layla guesses from a mile off, of course, and begins offering to help him out. He bluntly refuses to accept said aid, just to be stubborn like her and perhaps allow her to catch a hint that he _can’t_ look at her, not like that, for that amount of time. He’s becoming more irrational around her, keeping her in his mind’s eye for too long and constantly searching for her head of red hair in crowds he can look over the tops of. It’s a thrill ride, but one that’s promising to gut him alive if he begins believing that he even has a _slim_ chance with her.

Persephone makes her own choices.

_Of course she does._

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

Layla can’t help but think there should be more to school than learning things.

It might sound like the paradoxical statement of a hormonal and angry teenager (Warren, she thinks) but it’s really not.

This thought comes to her as she sits in her garden, gloves on her hands as she pulls up weeds with a ferocious amount of determination, trying to weed out her own insecurities as she saves her flowers from being overrun.

The irony is too heavy, she knows, for someone who can make plant grow from her fingertips to then bother about gardening, but there’s something about soft, rich soil, and dirt under her badly cut fingernails, and grass and daisies tickling her bare skin that makes for a good remedy to her soul. Call it therapeutic.

It’s only as she’s digging holes that would suit burrowing rabbits, trying to rid herself of a highly stubborn dandelion, that she hears a voice call out,

“That dandelion will need a funeral when you’re done with it - Christ, Williams.’

Smearing her gloved hand across her face, Layla squints up at the street that her rather sizable garden paves onto, the sunlight harsh and fluorescent to her eyes, having looked at dark earth for nearly three hours now.

Warren stands with his jacket thrown over his shoulder, hair swept back in a half up do that shows off the red streaks to a startling degree. He’s had them redone, she thinks.

His t-shirt is also very, _very_ sheer – a white against his bronze skin - so that’s not helping in this boiling heat.

Layla sits back on her legs, white linen shorts muddy with dirt and grass stains, fierce reminders of childhoods spent sprinting across the garden, her feet never quite able to catch up with her. It makes her feel so nostalgic it burns in the pit of her stomach, so she basks in it. Warren frowns slightly in response.

“Hey, Warren,”

He merely grunts in reply, which seems just a little too obnoxious for someone who is heavily certified as a partner in crime, but currently, ‘friendship’ seems too light weighted a word to identify exactly what it is that exists between them. Especially when she’s sitting in front of him with her knees stained green and a smear of dirt on her cheek, hair pulled back tight with her pale skin a little burnt on the cheeks, and Warren not batting an eyelid at it.

“Gardening?” he remarks, a tilt of a dark brow indicating a laugh.

Layla frowns a little, noticing a little twitch in his cheek that tells her something’s wrong. It’s not even that he looks any different – he retains that same sense of self that pervades everything else, making him walk in bright sunlight with a continuous shadow. For a teenager, he has learnt to be a form of intense that goes beyond its usual cringe-worthy reputation.

He’s standing tensely, affecting laidback and easy-going charm, showing a disinterest that doesn’t even manage to go skin deep, but Layla has not spent months on end with him, of volatile free will, to have him partially lie to her.

“What happened?” she asks carefully, hoping the warm breeze and scent of heady geraniums helps soothe his raging temper before he lets loose on her weeds. Whilst they deserve to be ripped out, there’s a way of doing it, and the same applies to anger.

He purses his lips carefully, unsure of himself when Layla is looking at him like that – barefaced and very much just herself, in the place that has birthed not just her, but her soul also, singing to the earth and lying on its back to stare at the clouds.

He can’t even admit to trying to brush it off.

She knows too much.

“My Dad’s out of prison,” he says bluntly, attempting a shrug, and Layla tries to think how best to console someone who clearly doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel about this particular development.

“Oh,” is all she can manage.

He shoves a hand into his pocket, leaning back to look at the sky, hair falling around his shoulders in strands, the dark brown glistening with auburn and red in the bright sunlight, profile tense but still so much like those classic sculptures of Roman Gods, meant to inspire beauty and desire in any who look at them.

Layla thinks he could pass as one of them rather _too_ easily, but now is not the time for that.

She sets her hands in her lap, clumsily running her nail on the underside of the others, flicking away the dirt with a careless concern. Whatever comes from the earth eventually returns to it, including her.

She wonders, momentarily, if Warren feels the same.

“The weeds won’t dig themselves,’ she says, but Warren shrugs, leaving her feeling a little put out.

“I don’t do dirt,” he mutters, biting his lip experimentally like he’s trying to see can he make it bleed. He’ll probably succeed, she thinks – Warren is very good at drawing blood for things, because he’s too passionate to try and avoid hurling himself into situations that require a wolf’s bite and its claws to match.

“Oh,” she says again, watching as he dips his head in goodbye, before sauntering off down the street again, broad shoulders a little hunched, gait a little more unsure of itself than she ever remembers.

She thinks she knows Warren better in this moment than she ever has done – all of him is one great façade, disguising confusion over what exactly he’s supposed to do in a world that asks him to choose between being his mother and his father, when he is in fact neither. He’s just a boy, Layla thinks, in a way akin to the thought processes of a mother. Growing, yes, but still at heart, the young boy who’s still trying to please people because he’s been taught to think that’s the way to live. The Warren she sees now is not a tragic figure, but a lonely one. Sure of what he doesn’t want, but not entirely aware of what he does.

Layla sighs to herself, brushing off her shorts.

She can’t help him with everything.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

He refuses to acknowledge it, of course.

He pretends not to care.

Inside, he feels only anger and resentment, because here lies the perfect opportunity to break someone’s nose and have the support of it from everybody.

Except maybe Layla. He guesses she’d say violence causes more problems than it has ever solved, despite her insane amount of power, just at her fingertips.  

She never talks about her powers, perhaps paradoxically, but then again, very few of them do. It’s like talking about your lunch – if you can see it, why bother talking about it. The only ones who care about their powers are the gossipers, because something like pyrokinetic abilities often gives people cause to start concocting insane theories about how much they think he’d destroy in an allocated time. He wonders how Layla feels about her powers – does growing things make her feel obliged to stop climate change all on her own? Does she feel like she’s burdened? Does she honestly believe she can make a difference with plants, anymore than he can with fire?

It’s those big questions – ones of grand importance that he hasn’t the faintest clue about – that make Warren want to throw something, just because it leads right back to the question of which parent he must align himself with. It’s bothered him since time began – scientifically, he is the accumulation of 50% of both parents’ DNA, and yet he is still expected to turn to favour one side. And all he knows is that if he even shows an iota of affection for his father notwithstanding current hatred, he’ll be hated too. Because it’s an unholy union that never usually happens.

That’s also why Will Stronghold continues to be the eternal thorn in his side, because he has exactly the easiest path out there – two superheroes, perfectly good, constantly revered, and Will couldn’t even _fake_ being the malcontent.  Perhaps he does have his own problems – but Warren feels like it’s probably over what hair gel to choose in the morning.

As the last month of the summer sweeps in, heat sweltering as the light bounces off car rooves and the pavement shivers with the temperature at 12 in the morning, Warren perhaps thinks he should talk to Layla about his Dad. His Mum is too preoccupied trying to sort herself out over the whole thing – he can tell she’s stressed by the increase of wine glasses he finds in the sink after dinner – and Layla has always sought to make him feel like he’s just a little confused, instead of brazen and sharp.

So he goes to her.

The doorbell rings, and he feels a little conspicuous standing on her porch at 7 in the evening, dressed in his a white cotton shirt, dark jeans and timberlands on his feet, feeling a little too underdressed to ask her to come and talk about his problems, but he doesn’t mind. He’s past caring about his reputation with her. She’s seen too much to him in this past year that he can’t help but feel a little lost without her. As an anchor to sanity and well-being, there’s definitely a funky side to her growing power. She might just be healing him.

The door opens to a Layla clearly giving few shits about her appearance, hair pulled back in a messy bun that hands in strands around her face, track shorts and a white t-shirt with the words ‘Plant trees and Save Bees’ on the front in simple, black font, like from a typewriter. He stares up at her, as she quirks an eyebrow, hand leaning against the doorframe as the early evening sun bathes her pale skin in a golden glow that makes her squint a little in the light.

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her more natural before. So very her, and it’s just… _real_.

“Hey,” he says cautiously, glancing around the street. It’s full of empty cars on the kerb and trees sprouting from the gardens of other houses, framing the road in a dappled, metallic glow from the sun as it filters through the leaves, a cool breeze spiced with barbecues from far off and heady flowers. He turns back to her.

“I -  uh,”

“Let me get my sandals,” she says quietly, disappearing behind the door and reappearing seconds later with a pair of walking sandals on, showing surprisingly sturdy ankles. He shouldn’t be surprised by this, of course. Not every girl has ankles like twigs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that either -

He thinks perhaps changing the subject is an idea.

“Where exactly are we going?” he asks, watching her walk ahead with a cardigan draped over her arm, a soft lime green that seems at odds with her black and white combo, but he thinks it’s a soothing hue for her skin tone.

“You’ll see,” she calls back to him, looking over her shoulder with a grin that could split the clouds, the low sun shining around her head, and he knows for definite now –

_He’s in love with Layla Williams._

 

 

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

The place she takes him is one of squashed grass and overhanging trees, and multitudes of wildflowers that look vaguely poisonous, but there’s an air to the place that makes it feel secluded, like they’re worlds away from Sky High and instead in its alternate fantasy universe, where they remain the fated lovers of Greek Mythology and he can simply profess everything to her, all with a warmth in his chest because _it’s meant to be._

Instead, he’s frowning at her as she pulls a daisy up from the ground and lazily tucks it into her hair, making another one grow in its place as the original peeks out from the swathes of silky red hair that’s hanging all around her face.

“So… what did you want to talk about?” she asks quietly, lying down on her back with her arms behind her head, the daises growing up around her as a meagre pillow, allowing her to still see him from her angle.

Warren snorts in response, glancing out across the place. It’s very green, he thinks – far greener than anything he lives by. And it’s very Layla-esque too – a wildness and natural way with it that makes it feel like they’ll never be found. He’s lost inside her head here – that feels like a good thing.

“Nothing,” he snaps, but Layla just quirks her eyebrow at him, trying her best to look at him whilst lying down, and it’s giving her a double chin. He snorts again.

“Likely story, Warren. Funny how I don’t believe it.”

She chucks grass at him, more eternally growing in its place.

Smoke erupts from his hand where the grass burns to cinders in his grip, letting the ashes crumble into nothing as they float on the wind. Charred smoke fills the atmosphere.

“Stop polluting my good place, Warren.” Layla chides, slapping him on the arm as she sits up, picking at a loose thread in her shorts as she undoes her sandals one-handed, letting her bare feet spread on the cool grass, nails painted a bright, coral pink. The sun’s dappling her skin now, peeking through trees, listening in on their conversation, and he knows why he likes her so much.

She doesn’t care who she is with him. Forget Stronghold, or Magenta, or Zach for one moment.

Layla doesn’t care how he sees her. Because she trusts him to _see_ her.

“I – I told you my Dad was out?”

She hums in response, slowly threading daisies again, more and more springing up in bundles around her, like subjects to a fair Queen.

She’s not fair, he thinks. She’s too natural for that. Sitting so close to her, he can see how she’s filled out - weight around her hips and a gentle slope to her shoulders; stretch marks on her legs and healed scrapes on her knees from her time with gardening tools. Fine, ginger hair on her arms, feathery and barely there – a dent in her forehead from long-past chickenpox. Fingernails badly cut and still trimmed with dirt.  A lone scar on the underside of her chin from acne that’s long since passed.

She’s _alive_ , he thinks. Alive like the very earth she nurtures, her hands always calloused like the bumps in the soil, her skin always stained with dirt and grass like the animals, scent always sweet and rich like honey. She’s beyond natural. She is the very ground beneath his feet.

This is her power, he realizes. To grow and become a part of the world itself. It’s at her beck and call.

And she’s _powerful_.

“I don’t want to see him,” Warren states, blunt and cutting to the point, trying to reel their conversation back on track before he stares at her for too long.

“Why?” she asks breezily, almost casually, and he just glances up at her, pulling at the grass experimentally. More grows in its place, and he looks at her guiltily, watching her raised eyebrow.

“Sorry,” he mutters, brushing off his hands quickly.

“I just – he spent my entire childhood locked up and now he wants to come and see me? Doesn’t sound very genuine,”

“OK, but – he’s your _Dad_. Don’t you want – I dunno, some closure?”

Warren tilts his head as she carefully threads more daisies into her chain, now adding iris and bluebell into the mix. It’s beginning to look like a crown.

Fitting.

“Not really. Not if he’s planning to jump back into our lives just cause the law can’t detain him any longer,”

Layla sighs carefully, watching a nose peek out from the undergrowth, before a rabbit hops out, sniffing cautiously, only to come up to her, fur ultra soft against her skin and nosing her fingers with a friendly curiosity. She sets the crown on its head, stroking its ears back as she turns to Warren again. He’s feeling a little transfixed that his goddessly Posy Girl is also apparently Snow White.

“I feel like you’re only going to drown your sorrows if you don’t confront it. You don’t strike me as someone who’s willing to hide behind doors, avoiding things.”

“Layla Williams advocating violence? I’m shocked,”

Layla snorts.

“No. But talk to him – at least tell him how you feel. Too much clogging the air is going to sting your eyes. We wouldn’t want that,” she inclines her head, a glowing smile on her face, genuine but small and just a little encouraging.

And he can’t take it anymore.

“Maybe, Posy Girl. Maybe I will,”

Layla smiles warmly, stroking the rabbit’s fur once more before it shoots off, under the bushes with only a faint rustling.

“Why do you call me that?” Layla huffs, looking him straight in the eye. He smiles thinly, leaning back on his forearms, revealing only a small sliver of bronzed skin near his hips that serves to make her heart leap a little. Across the year, she’s noticed his style has lightened a little – bright whites and soft greys replacing the draining blacks and charcoal greys, but she likes him no matter how he looks. For now, he’s trying very hard to make it very difficult to resist him, all windswept and rumpled and a little broken, but she wants to help him long before anything else.

“Posy Girl?” he asks, looking up at her from his languid position by her side. He shrugs noncommittally.

“Cause it suits you, I guess,”

“Oh, really,” The sarcasm is not at all disguised.

A whisper of a smile graces his mouth, as he lets his head thump down on the grass, hands now behind his head, a mimic of Layla’s last position. His waspish grin makes her bite her lip in annoyance.

She actually hates him so much.

(She’s lying).

“Yeah, really. Pretty but packs a punch.” He pauses for thought.

“Hey, actually that could be your superhero name -” he attempts to sit up, finger pointed in mock realization, but Layla shoves him back down again with a playful smile.

“Knock it off, Warren!”

He just grins in response.

“And anyway, I don’t plan on being a superhero. You can do plenty as a normal person.”

He looks up at her face, the tilt of her chin, the curl of her lip as she thinks. He can’t quite believe she’s managed to become quite so comfortable a presence that he knows this much about her. Maybe he just didn’t see it coming.

Scratch that. He _never_ did.

“You don’t want -?”

“Nope,” she says it cheerily, but he can sense that there’s an underlying feeling of regret – or –

No, it’s resignation. She’s resigned herself to that choice.

Warren decides very quickly that no one can tell Layla what to do, especially when she’s so stubborn.

He sits up carefully, looking at her directly, dark eyes a little tired around the eyes, but nonetheless intense and concerned.

“Williams?”

Layla rolls her eyes, shoving him away, but he takes her hand, holding it against his chest, his grip secure but definitely worried. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this direct with her before – not like this. Not in a secluded glade with no one but her in residence save for that rabbit, with a cotton shirt on and his hair hanging around his shoulders, the sun turning his red steak auburn.

She sighs, thinking of when she took his hand on the school steps, and he burnt her. Not viciously, just as a cautious reminder that walls were up and she had to be prepared to climb them. Now –

“My powers can’t be used for anything destructive. I don’t _want_ to use them in that way. They’re meant to heal – to care for. Breaking stuff hardly seems the way to go about that,”

Warren shrugs, letting their hands drop to the grass, where he turns her palm over, looking carefully across the callouses and the healed cuts, and slightly ragged skin around the fingertips. They look like they’ve been used – lived with. And she’s only 17.

And then, as easily dismissed as a mole or a birthmark, there’s a little flame-shaped burn, near the slope of her thumb, indented a little like it’s been pressed there, like flowers in a well-read diary or best-forgotten love letters in a drawer. Before he knows what he’s doing, his thumb strokes across the spot, glancing up through his hair at her, watching her expression become one of intense longing and slight trepidation.

“Did I do this to you?” He asks, and she laughs, huffing out a breath.

“Of course you did. Who else could burn me and not even make it hurt?”

His expression remains blank.

“Remember when you – well, when I – held your hand? Because I was trying to make Will jealous? You burned me – which, by the way, you never apologized for.”

Warren frowns heavily, curling her fingers around and letting her hand go, lying back down on the grass.

“I didn’t mean to,” he says quietly, and Layla believes him, but that’s not an apology.

“Yeah, but you did.”

“Yeah, but you never _said_ anything,”

“Why should I have to? They’re your powers, and you shouldn’t use them to hurt other people. That’s not how it works, Warren.”

He sighs, closing his eyes. He looks peaceful, she thinks, but Layla also knows that she can’t just let him away with it. Just because it didn’t hurt, doesn’t immediately mean that he can shrug it off.

She also realizes she probably should have said something about it ages ago, but it’s only a realization now that she kind of let the burn become a part of her.

“Fair enough. I’m sorry,” He sounds sincere, even if the words are a little clunky.

Layla nods once, all business. 

“It’s fine, I just think you – you need to learn that your powers, they – they can become a way to get what you want, easily. And if anything, Warren – you’re not that kind of guy. _I_ know that, but not everybody knows you. You’ve got to fight that battle yourself. I can’t do everything for you. You’re not a child.”

He looks round at her, a hard frown on his face.

“So much for this being me talking about my problems.” He mutters, but he smirks a little afterwards, not able to stay entirely annoyed at her for telling him the blunt truth. It’s all he’s ever wanted from anybody, and it’s the very least he can ask for.

He just hopes she realizes that he trusts her more than anyone.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

If Magenta is sure of one thing, Layla is absolutely shit when it comes to keeping secrets.

And she knows that it’s involved with Warren somehow, but she doesn’t pry. Guinea pig’s pride.

What she’s more interested in is the future. Because you do not go to Sky High without the express intention of trying to discover how best to benefit the world. Even if it becomes something as simple as making sure the school stays afloat.

Except Will kind of covered that issue.

Anyways.

Lying in Layla’s back garden, said girl by her side, Magenta admits that Layla is exactly her kind of girl. Smart, witty, funny, genuine, honest, kind and caring. She’s exactly the sort of person she wants to be with – but trying to explain that to Layla, despite her open-mindedness, is still not something she feels ready to say yet. Except she also kind of does.

“Question four?” she chirps, but Layla rolls her eyes, red plait swinging round in frustration, as she quirks her eyebrow at her friend, quickly tallying her violet, bouncy curls and black, paisley print dress, barefoot but with alarmingly bright purple nail varnish on her toenails, a blast of summer against her dark skin.

“Do not even attempt to ask me about question four - it can go die,” Layla quips, stabbing her pen into the page. Magenta widens her eyes.

“Way to overreact.”

Layla sighs, throwing the book and pen down beside her. Summer work – ‘to keep them ticking over because they’re junior year’ – is not a necessity, because they happen to be bright, teenage girls with a fair ration of common sense. But nevertheless – the school insists, and neither of the two of them feel they have enough energy to fight the system on this particular subject.

“Sorry, I just – I’m panicking.”

“Panicking? Over _what_ , exactly? The sun is shining, Williams – all is rosy in thine world,”

“As much as I appreciate the Shakespearean talk -”

“Shakespeare was a genius white man, for a change,” Magenta interrupts, making Layla quirk that little coy, joyous smile that makes Magenta feel like she’s simultaneously on fire and trying to run for cover. Gosh, she loves her.

“Yeah, well – I don’t know what I want to do with my life. Like I know I still have all of this year to figure it out, and that I can always change my mind but – why did I think I could survive junior year when I can barely survive summer work?”

Magenta frowns, dumping her own materials by her side, seeing the worry creep up on Layla’s face. She knows that fear all too well – it’s the fear that now accompanies anything that involves being an adult, particularly when the whole world expects them to know what to do with themselves when they’ve barely lived.

It’s a shithole, really, but that’s just Magenta’s opinion.

“Hey – yo, _chill_ ,” she snaps, watching as Layla nearly goes into meltdown quicker than should be humanely possible.

“We’ve still got the summer sunshine, stop plotting the dark days, alright? Layla Williams, if anyone can figure out life, you can. We’re all doing shit, just take it in your stride,”

Layla smiles over at her, looking at her work before shoving it aside and lying down beside her friend, looking up at the cloudless sky with a warm – but still heavy – heart.

“Thanks, Violet,”

“Anytime, Posy,”

 

She wants to tell her.

Maybe someday she will.

 

(She thinks she’ll do it tomorrow).

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

The end of August proves a very strange time for Layla – it feels too charged with everything she’s ever felt, particularly when she considers how easily she can slip from entirely nonplussed about life to freaking out about it big time. She knows her junior year will be bigger than anything – a real challenge to her powers. Despite the high school’s residing opinion that distinguishing between ‘heroes’ and ‘sidekicks’ is still necessary, and thus stubbornly remains, she knows she’s powerful. No girl she’s ever met walks around without at least a little knowledge of just how much they can destroy if they become angry enough.

Some things never change.

Warren has changed significantly, though, and that confuses her.

Before her, across the majority of a year, he has become something of a bright star, risen from the ashes of a lost and angry individual who decided shoving his emotions into lead lined boxes was the best course of action. Now, he wears his emotions on his sleeves, still capable of his disgruntled frown and grumpy exterior, but she’s seen that grin of his that can light up carnivals on its own, and the gentle side to his personality that is officially under wraps. Unless it involves her.

(She’s secretly proud of that).

It’s the last day in August, at his last late shift before school resumes, when Layla decides she’s fallen in love with him. It’s not even a conscious decision. It just crosses her mind, watching him clean the tables and make jokes in Mandarin directed towards Mrs Chan, that shit-eating grin softening the sharp wit of his tongue. His hair’s been pulled back in a short plait, now long enough to have the criss-cross evident, strands hanging around his eyes. She’s also noticed that he’s been smiling moreso these days.

Whether or not that has anything to do with her is strictly up for debate.

He turns round to look at her, as she’s waiting by the door as usual, hair in two plaited space buns, loose white t-shirt and washed out jeans clad to her legs, grey cardigan tied around her waist, with a pair of ratty but well-loved converse on her feet. She grins at him, biting her thumb nail, and he can’t help but smile back, biting his lip as he glances at Mrs Chan, who is currently preoccupied with punishing a serving plate for having a seemingly irremovable stain.

Layla wonders how it happened. How Warren, so often a young man of few words, has opened up to her more than he probably has with anybody. How, against everything, he’s become genuine friends with her, wanting to spend time with her, actively seeking her advice. She pieces it together, and falls short of the answer. How long has she even felt this way about him?

Was it when he told her about his Dad? Was it when he came to Homecoming for her? Was it when they helped save the world with their friends?

Or maybe was it when he came up to her in this restaurant, for once unmasked from his villainous persona - so kindly provided by the school populous – and instead showing himself as he really was?

She thinks perhaps it might have been.

Even watching him saunter up to her, his shift now finished, with that stupid little smirk on his face, and satchel slung over his denim clad shoulders, one hand in his pocket as he leans past her to get the door – it’s enough to make her heart beat faster, because now she knows exactly what it is that she wants when she looks at him. It’s all shades of madness and giddy joy, because she’s just - _she’s figured it out_.

“Let’s go,” he says, and Layla merely nods in return, lost in her thoughts.

She doesn’t know what to do anymore.

The two of them walk, evidently on their way back to her house again, as is part of their daily routine on his Tuesday shift. It’s difficult, she knows – to ignore the faint scent of his cologne, and the way she can feel the shape of his shoulder brushing against hers as they walk side by side. Whatever has happened to her, she knows she can’t imagine life without Warren Peace anymore. She could survive without him, she knows – but it sounds like an unpleasant existence, even just a little bit. No matter how much she and Will still hold a friendship standing the test of time beyond many; no matter how Magenta has become a friend worth dying for –

Warren is something else. A security, and a safety. A warmth and a pride and a support and a comfort when the world turns against her, because he knows what it’s like to often walk a less beaten track.

She feels like she can’t take it anymore. Watching him as she does, with his well-concealed kindness and often, casual laughter, and quick temper, and rough passion, and well-earned intelligence, and brutal, unashamed, open, easily broken heart –

She is desperately in love with him, and she knows it.

And she thinks – well, maybe he knows.

And maybe he loves her too.

“Warren -”

He freezes at his name, turning to look over his shoulder at her. He’s let his hair loose again, the tie around his wrist, along with a leather wristband threaded with daisies that never die.

“Hold up a minute,” Layla says quietly, looking at her feet. Her laces have come loose, and she makes a big show of bending down to fix them, carefully looping them with her chipped, turquoise blue nails, the threading of them reminding her of her mother tying her shoelaces when she was five.

It’s a quick reminder that she is such a different girl than she was in the past.

Standing up again, she finds Warren exactly where she last saw him, but with a more concerned look on his face than perhaps she is used to. She so often sees him with a soft look in his eye, noticing such a familiar expression on his face – as from the past – feels odd. Like they’re back at square one, introducing themselves.

“I – I have to tell you something,” she tries, fiddling with her bag strap, looping it around her finger, feeling the evening sunshine on her skin as they stand in the street, trees hanging over them like canopies, light streaming in like gold beams through windows, a discarded soda can in one corner of the street and a car passing by them in its lazy, monotonous way.

Warren’s looking at her strangely, like he knows what she’s going to say but isn’t entirely sure she’s going to actually go through with it.

She decides that she’s waiting too long for this, because heck – this boy means more to her than she ever envisioned, and she can’t take it anymore –

“Persephone,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

Layla looks at him, mouth open to speak, but she finds she can’t word this in any dreamy, romantic way that’ll lead to a soppy ending and a happily ever after. It’s just a simple fact now.

“I – I’m -” She curses, dropping her head as she breathes in carefully. This lovey-dovey stuff clearly isn’t as smooth as it is in the books.

She huffs out breath, swiping at her cheek for tears that she knows are coming but aren’t ready to fall yet.

“I’m – you -”

“Layla, what the _heck_? What’s wrong?” His expression looks genuinely worried for her health now, his brow furrowed and frown both disguising his confusion and fully displaying his concern.

Layla sighs again, breathing unevenly.

“I’m in love with you,” she blurts out, swiping her hair back from her face with both hands, letting them lower to her hips, standing looking to the side, before folding her arms and staring at the ground, before _then_ looking up at the sky for divine intervention that won’t come, and she knows it. That’s what makes it worse.

Chancing a look at Warren makes her wish she hadn’t, because he’s staring at he with his dark eyes completely racing, but his whole body stiff, paused on the street with his hand gripping his bag’s strap so tightly that his knuckles are losing the blood circulation.

“OK, you know what? Let’s forget I said that -” Layla says, making a move to brush off her top for non-existent dirt, just as he says,

“Are you serious?”

She looks at him with a mixture of surprise and worry, watching his cheeks blush dark with the realization, and she feels her own face heat up, folding her arms carefully.

“Uh – yeah. Very serious.”

“Oh,”

He sounds only vaguely surprised.

“How long?” he asks after a short pause.

Layla thinks.

“Maybe a few months? I don’t – I’m not really sure. I just kind of – _know_.”

“Oh,” he says again, looking to the side as his hands force themselves into his pockets, only briefly brushing his dark hair behind his ears with a slightly shaky hand. He can feel the adrenaline of the moment rushing through him – the whole euphoria and shock and longing all rushing into one moment, to fight for dominance in his nervous system, and he feels –

Well, everything.

Layla glances up at him, finding him watching her with a look completely devoid of the confusion from before. He looks blankly happy – like he has just realized that the world’s oh so worth the time wasted wandering about in it. Because that’s what life is about.

Wandering into each other.

“Me too,” he says, before bursting into a nervous laugh, covering his face with his hands in a brief moment of embarrassment; it looks strange on him, she thinks, because it’s the last crack in the façade of the bad boy stereotype he has worn for so long. And then, with a calm expression on his face – perhaps because it’s just giving in to the truth now  - he comes over to her and hugs her, holding her to him with every ounce of breathless joy he can manage. She can feel his erratic heart through his chest, feel his breath in her hair, his chin pressed into the crown of her head, and she feels, perhaps, that this must be what unconditional happiness might be like. Just to know that she’s got it down – that she’s found her courage enough to admit the big things.

When he lets her go, he brings her hand up to his mouth, pressing a tentative, unsure kiss to the inside of her wrist, unfamiliar with the action but clearly wanting to get used to the idea of it. Her skin tingles where his lips touch her – like a butterfly fanning its wings against the hairs on her arm.

“Thank you,” he says, holding her hands shakily as he smiles to himself. Layla gives his fingers a light squeeze, feeling the roughness of his palms and liking the feel of his hands wrapped around her own; strong and long fingered and just a little scarred from some fight he’s never truly healed up from. Probably from when he was too young to avoid scarring.

“Let’s go home, shall we…Hades?” she smiles back at him, allowing their personal joke to pervade this moment. It has meant a lot to her in her childhood, but now her childhood story is unfolding before her.

“Yeah, whatever, Persephone,” he mutters, beginning to walk with her by his side, carefully reaching for her fingers after a moment’s pause, letting her hand curl into his with a small, gentle brush of skin before he can feel the heat of her palm right against his. But they don’t make their way to her house. No. They’re choosing a place far removed from everything else; a place synonymous with growth and overflowing with the promise of myths being true.

Perhaps it’s unconventional, Layla thinks – but at least she’s happy.

That’s all Persephone ever wanted.

And it’s all she’s ever wanted too.

 

 ×             ×             ×             ×

Warren has decided that this is not how he envisioned his life playing out.

School in September never feels entirely right, because it’s stuck between summer and autumn, so makes a move to stretch itself across the two.  He likes it, he thinks – it’s breaching the summer like Persephone in the story, because of course he’s become so familiar with the fable.

He, remarkably, can see Persephone in Layla more and more every day, despite their joking nicknames.

Whatever it is that they are, he doesn’t know. Nothing’s been set down in stone. There’s been no romantic encounters, no dates. They told each other and have left it at that.

He’s not sure how to feel about that.

Walking the hallways once again feels like a throwback to his first year here – freshman year was an absolute shitstorm; sophomore year he fell in love.

Interesting combination, he thinks, but now he’s junior year, and it feels like the world’s caving in on him, because now the decisions start happening as to where he wants to go and what he wants to do with his life.

It’s changed, of course – he’s not the resident bad boy anymore. He’s just himself – often in his leather bound attire, but without the chip on his shoulder and a positively beautiful ray of sunshine by his side whenever he can see her.

She’s everything to him – even if they can be apart – and he just loves knowing that he can confide in her if not anyone else.

“Warren!”

The voice jars him out of his reverie, looking over his shoulder to see a lithe Will Stronghold walking his way, very much changed from his first year, where they fought and snarled and cowered in fear from each other, respectively. If anything, Stronghold lives up to his name – and not just in his powers. He’s grown, Warren thinks – he didn’t see him over the summer because the two of them aren’t pally – but he’s standing at only a few inches above what he was two years ago, and yet seems taller for it. Like he’s comfortable with his skin.

Warren thinks perhaps that’s fair, considering that he seems to have suddenly gained broad shoulders and a narrow waist, with a tight t-shirt earning him some adoring looks.

Warren sneers to himself.

“What the hell, Stronghold?”

“Charming greeting as usual,” Will quips, hands in pockets as he stands a little slouched, eyebrow raised in mock surprise at his tone. Warren knows full well that Stronghold’s not at all surprised that he’s been sharp with him.

“We are not friends,” Warren snaps, continuing to walk with a determined gait, striding past a group of terrified freshman who remind him a little too much of what they were like two years ago.

It feels like a lifetime ago.

“Again, charming,” Will says, but he doesn’t appear finished, which is a real pity in Warren’s opinion.

“Hey look, I needed to ask you about Layla,”

That makes him pause. His slow turn towards him - sun hitting the lockers in a slightly blinding way, the squeak of linoleum floors setting the backdrop – is cautious, because no one, not even him, has breached a subject concerning Layla.

Stronghold looks on edge, but with a firm line to his mouth.

“You two – you’re – you like her, right?”

It sounds a little blunt coming from his mouth, scratching casually at the small amount of stubble on his chin, messenger bag readjusted on his shoulder as he watches Warren’s expression morph into one of simultaneous admittance and defiance.

“I fail to see what this has to do with you,” he snaps, folding his arms with a quirk of his eyebrow, dark hair hanging around his face today, just like when they first met. Except this feels entirely different – like a reconciliation between them.

He can’t explain it.

“I just – Layla’s my best friend. Look after her, whatever happens. Because I’ll be looking out for her too,”

The sincere look on his face is entirely unlike what Warren was expecting – perhaps a smack-down talk about what happens if it turns out to be true – but then, Will Stronghold is not his father. He’s not one to flaunt strength and make threats. He compromises – his strength is his kindness, not just his physical capabilities.

Something about that makes Warren feel even just a little more at ease.

“You really care about her, don’t you?” Warren asks.

The conciliatory nod from Will reminds him that he went out with her. That too feels like an age ago, and it does weird things to Warren’s stomach, upon the realization that he too is filling those vacant shoes. Maybe.

Will sighs, shrugging his shoulders, shaking his head a little in disbelief.

“Yeah, I do – regardless. But you two, you – you’re good for each other. I actually probably should have seen that coming,”

Warren can’t help a smile slip onto his face – small and concise, but still there.

It is at this point that a girl comes running up towards Will, smacking his arm with jovial and mock annoyance.

“William Theodore Stronghold, get your ass to class!”

Will looks down at the girl by his shoulder, having what appears to be a rolled up essay slapped on his chest.

She gives a cursory glance to Warren, who feels like saying something doesn’t quite cover the fact that he has no idea who this is.

“Oh, hi Warren,” she says, tossing her dark curls over one shoulder, shimmering with gold and bronze in the sunlight coming from the window. She’s dazzling, he thinks – in such a bright way that she’s hard to look at, with her dark skin marked with pale patches of skin on her shoulders and hands, with a jagged strike of pale skin across her cheek, leaving her looking like she’s been marked by lightning.

Will is also gazing at her like she has hung the sun, the moon, the stars, and all else that is visible in the night sky, and Warren essentially realizes what is going on.

Meanwhile, she is still talking.

“I thought you told me you’d be early to class today? Because this essay holds more value than almost everything else in the course?”

Will laughs, rubbing at his eye.

“I - did actually say that, yeah – God, sorry -”

“‘Sorry’ does not cover up a fail grade, Stronghold,”

He brushes back her errant curls, glancing up at Warren momentarily.

“Don’t hold back,” he says, giving him a look that says a lot more than words can wield, before following the girl down the hallway. She pauses, turning back to Warren, her skin glowing a little in the light.

“I’m Sadie, by the way!” she calls, just as she disappears round the corner, leaving Warren feeling like he has both witnessed a miracle and been told he’s Jesus.

One thing, though.

Stronghold is bloody right.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

 

It’s on the walk to Layla’s house once more that Warren perhaps thinks he has spent too long trying to avoid the conversation of what happens now.

Layla has become something indescribable to him – a young woman so alive that it becomes painful to look at her, just through the sheer force by which she lives her life, always fighting for what she believes in. Always encouraging him to do his best – to be a better person.

And yet he can’t seem to tell her that he wants more – he wants to be able to be with her in the dark; to sit with her in empty libraries as they study; to be with her whenever she’s alone.

Stronghold is with someone – not that he’s incredulous to the notion, because clearly, Will has become something of a clean cut hero, whilst being entirely unlike his father – and it makes him feel… well, kind of… alone.

Because the history between Layla and Will is too long and tiresome to wade through, but the long story cut short is that Will still cares for her, but still finds love elsewhere. Or at least, what he hasn’t told Sadie yet.

Arriving at the front door is a temporary affair, as Layla leads him out to the back, letting him dump his boots at the front door, as if he has walked in here a thousand times with that exact motion, and leads him out into the garden, freewheeling everywhere he can see, despite the small size. It’s certainly easy to see how Layla is so at home with her powers – she’s surrounded by their plenty every day.

The seat beside her in the grass feels a little tense, like he ought to be saying something; instead, he picks at a loose thread in his t-shirt’s hem and glances up noncommittally at the sky, the perfumes of dozens of flowers, all distinguishable from each other, pervade his senses, a cherry tree hanging over them with curved, gentle fingers and the sweet, whimsical birdsong seemingly all around them. It’s a place still caught in the summer, he thinks. Perhaps it looks beautiful every season. For now, it looks like life in every corner.

Layla sits with a careful smile on her face, lying back on the grass as she cloud gazes, blinking lazily with her red hair in soft waves around her head, like the Sleeping Beauty she has never aspired to be.

Warren thinks he has never seen her more beautiful.

Her garden – her mother’s, too – feels like she’s more at home here than even the glade, Simply put, because this holds her past, as a young girl long before she met him.

This could easily have been the place where she could have been stolen away, only the cherry tree suitable coverage from the street. They’re lost here, just like her beloved story, of the young daughter of summer and the King come to recklessly fall in love with her.

It’s so accurately, deeply true that it hurts.

“Layla,” he murmurs, but she catches it, in amongst the birdsong and the breeze.

“Yeah?”

The look in his eyes startles her – but only momentarily. Like enjoying the drop once you’ve leaped off the cliff, ready to dive into the ocean with a _splash_ …

His gaze is dark, more full of longing than she ever remembers seeing him, his dark hair tucked behind one ear, a loose black t-shirt a little sheer and sticking to his skin in the strange September heat, showing her a little more of him that he would never voluntarily display to her.

Or maybe he would.

He leans down a little, plucking the nearest, blood red flower from the pomegranate tree beside her, the full sun casting its petals in a vivid, bright hue, the scent a little sweet and tart to his senses as he tucks into her hair, behind her ear. It stands out in her hair, so clearly belonging with her.

Layla lets the smallest of smiles grace her lips, unable to really comprehend how to act in a situation she has never been familiar with before.

Her and Will, they were –

She can’t possibly think of Will when he’s here.

He’s here with her.

His hand is on her face, palm warm against her cheek, as he glances across her face with careful consideration, taking in every feature and flaw with equal awe.

She might just agree to go away with him.

“Steal me away,” Layla whispers, sitting up a little, just as he leans forward, hand slipping to her waist as he pulls her in, lips chaste against her own but feeling like he’s taken her with everything he has, giving everything to her without even a hesitation.

It’s not passionate, she thinks – it’s too sweet for that. But she knows it could be – he’s just holding back because sunlight is a very bad friend to have when you want secrecy.

She needs darker evenings to see how much he really wants her.

He pulls away only to look at her eyes, forehead against hers as his hair falls into his eyes, lips parted a little from breathlessness. He didn’t even try to take her more than he deserved. That kiss was permission to see her for everything.

She’s agreeing.

She leans in again, breathing into his mouth as she kisses him again, tasting something tangy in his mouth, like Seville oranges or spiked ginger root. Whatever it is –

They end up on the grass, too easily stolen from reality to care what the world’s doing anymore.

 

×             ×             ×             ×

“Do you think he told her?”

Will looks over at Sadie, sitting on his porch with her chin in her hand, looking out at the street. He likes having her by his side – even though he hasn’t told her just how much. But he knows she already knows – that’s kind of her thing. She can read people like a book, and it’s not even her superpower. She’s a light –bringer – a kind of human lens that channels light to a scientific degree.

He’s more taken with her sunny personality, really.

“Definitely,” he says, with absolutely no conviction at all, because hell knows what Warren Peace chooses to do with himself.  Certainly not him.

Sadie shoves him in the side, her bright eyes dazzling in the evening light, the brown of her irises turned gold, despite how tired she looks. She doesn’t do well when there’s no sunlight.

“Hmmm,” she smirks, looking down the street, watching the cars with a feigned interest as she senses Will’s presence at her side, hand reaching over to take hers, tentative to see if he has the permission.

She lets him without question.

“ _I_ think they did,” she says, brushing some curls behind her ear as she turns towards Will, watching his eyes watch her, gazing over her eyes and the lightning scar of white skin down her cheek, cutting an impressive streak through her dark skin. She looks like she’s been blessed by Thor.

“Let’s hope so,” Will says, and Sadie smiles a little, her lips a little freckled with the sun, more of them dancing around her eyes and making her seem like she’s shining. She thinks Will wears his expressions far too openly – she can see the gaze he has, full of breathless, hopeless infatuation. He looks handsome in that curiously normal way – unlike his Dad, free from all the bravado and posture that she somehow feels is a part of his Dad’s inherent personality. He’s a little shy, but confident nonetheless; he’s grown into that model of heroism, but he isn’t predictable, and that’s what she likes about him.

He’s choosing a different path from his parents, and it’s very brave.

She likes that about him too.

She brushes a hand through his hair, watching the waves fall forward a little, but she has little time to correct them, as he presses forward, kissing the side of her mouth, only pulling back to survey her expression.

She smiles at him cheekily, pulling him back by his nape, and he obliges her.

She tastes like sunshine too.

×             ×             ×             ×

 

When Persephone was stolen, the Underworld didn’t phase her. Perhaps she didn’t feel intimidated by it.

Perhaps she did, and just chose not to show it.

The same was with Layla.

For years, Warren Peace had tried to prove that he was as bad as his father, to prove people right (wrongly) so he would be left alone.

He’d been Hades long before she’d intervened.

But he’d stolen her away in the end, ever since she encountered him in her personal garden – and he’d kept stealing her until she couldn’t help it anymore.

But she’d stolen him too – lead him down her garden path, to a world more in bloom than anything he’d seen before, and she was a lightness when all he’d known was dark.

Warren had fallen in love with her – his Persephone, his Posy Girl, the hippy he’d admired from afar, and he’d fallen for her so deeply he couldn’t imagine never having met her.

 

And Layla had fallen in love with him - her Hades. Her soulmate, her friend, the boy she’d become determined to love when no one else would.

 

Persephone was stolen, but the summer still came.

And the winters were never cold again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> How was this thing 38 motherfucking pages long like what the actual hell. 
> 
> Anyways. *laughs* 
> 
> I actually really loved writing this, simply being that I love the story of Hades and Persephone. Hopefully the ending finally tied up that whole Greek Myth thing that was running through it. I certainly hope it was worth the ungodly amount of time I spent on it. 
> 
> For all interested, Persephone means 'chaos bringer' or 'one who brings chaos', and the original myth has plenty of different versions, but I liked the idea of having Layla represent this Goddess of Nature whilst also being rather terrifying when it came to her anger. If anything, my main point here was to prove just how much Layla and Warren should have been together. Even just for a second. 
> 
> But there's the media for you. 
> 
> If anything, this could turn into a Percy Jackson AU???? If anyone wants to take that idea and run with it, go right ahead - I'd be intrigued to see how that might pan out in different people's heads. You know, a son of Hades and daughter of Demeter.... 
> 
> Please ignore my ramblings. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for everyone's continued support of my work - it's an absolute joy and pleasure to have such a great response from such fine people. 
> 
> (And kudos and reviews are always appreciated - but you guys already knew that).


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